Punty

Fillacello: a net of crossed lines, filled in with color

Fillacello starts from reticello, a Venetian cane technique that makes a fine net of crossed lines, and fills the open diamonds of that net with color. It's a flamework technique from this century, first seen on the US West Coast. The body of McDoogle Glass's recycler here is worked in it.

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Reticello first

Reticello is one of the filigrana techniques that glassmakers on Murano worked out in the 16th century, using canes with white or colored threads inside clear glass. The Corning Museum of Glass describes it as canes "organized in a crisscross pattern to form a fine net," which may hold tiny air traps.

In furnace glass the net comes from two layers. A bubble is blown with its threads spiraling one way, a second bubble is made with the spiral running the other way, and one is fused inside the other. Where the lines cross, the glass meets; between them, small pockets of air stay trapped in the diamonds.

Then the fill

Glass historian Paul Engle describes the flamework version as lines applied to tubing with stringer, twisted, and then filled with color, and notes that it was "playfully dubbed 'fillacello.'" High Times put it the same way in 2017: fillacello "comes from the reticello technique" and fills in the spaces with color.

From spiral lines to reticello to fillacello Three square swatches. The first shows lines running diagonally one way. The second adds a second layer of lines running the other way, making a net of empty diamonds. The third fills each diamond with color. 1. Lines twisted one way 2. A second layer the other way 3. Fill the diamonds The net is reticello That's fillacello
A simplified drawing of the idea, not of any piece here. Real fillacello is curved around the glass and the fill colors are the maker's choice.

Who started it

Engle's research puts the first flamework examples on the West Coast around 2005 to 2007, and he writes that the origin is still unclear. Other writers credit different artists. We don't pick one.

Fillacello, reticello and wig wag side by side

Pattern What you see Here
Reticello A net of crossed lines, the diamonds left clear none right now
Fillacello The same net, each diamond filled with color McDoogle Glass's recycler
Wig wag Lines folded back and forth into zigzags, no crossing net wig wag pieces

A net with clear diamonds is reticello by these definitions, and zigzag lines are wig wag. Fillacello needs both the crossed net and the fill.

Where to look on the McDoogle recycler

The patterned work sits in the lower can and the round marble on its side, in dark blue and white against black glass, with the clear funnel of the recycler above it. Open the piece to see all five photos, close enough to follow the lines.

Sources

  1. Paul Engle, Reticello Glass, Conciatore (2019), how reticello is made; the flamework variant 'playfully dubbed fillacello'; first examples on the West Coast around 2005 to 2007; origin unclear
  2. Corning Museum of Glass, Glass Dictionary: vetro a reticello, a fine net of crisscrossed canes, which may hold tiny air traps
  3. Corning Museum of Glass, Glass Dictionary: filigrana, the cane family reticello belongs to, from 16th-century Murano
  4. Ab Hanna, Smoke a Million Dollar Pipe, High Times (2017), fillacello comes from reticello and fills the spaces with color

Fillacello in the pieces here

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